The ABC religion and ethics division is a source of constant disappointments. There is a lot of religious gobbledegook and little ethics in the daily sauce. Today we analyse what should have been a major breakthrough in helping students discover their purpose in life.

Sir Keith Burnett is an important man with a beard yet seemingly of poor intellect past his specialties of physics and maths. His Life Sciences seem to be lacking:

Professor Sir Keith Burnett CBE FRS FLSW is Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sheffield.

A few years ago I was asked to give a lecture in Cambridge on the importance of religion in Higher Education. To be frank, I was daunted by the prospect of talking to an audience of Professors of Theology, and not simply because I am a physicist rather than an expert on sacred texts.

I need not have worried. As I reached back into my own experience and encounters with students and teachers of many religions, I think I sounded almost evangelical at times.

Because beyond all the talk of comparative religion and mutual understanding, there is one aspect of my own wishy-washy faith that seems ever more necessary to survival for us all, not just students or a teacher's.

It is that each and every one of us is a unique part of creation, valuable and important in our own right.

read more:

http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2017/03/28/4643867.htm

Sir Keith Burnett looses the plot at this point. His wishy-washy faith is an excuse for describing the human complex individual uniqueness and a democratic problem that used to be the propriety of kings: Narcissism. The good old (he must be old since he has a “Sir” in front of him – well he is not that old, he was born in 1953, two years after Gus had produced his first cartoons) professor is worried that young people’s alternative to Christian faith is an extendable page on Facebook with ratings of their relationships through selfies. His conclusion is quite obscene:

In the end, the loss to society and to ourselves of our quick fire addiction to social media may be nothing less than the ability fully to see ourselves and one another, to take the time to listen between the status updates and to see past the selfies. The answer to our struggles to connect may not be religion, but I am convinced we need more than a marketized model of the human soul.

The good old University Vice-Chancellor might be a fabulous physicist whose work has taken him into the field of the Bose-Einstein Condensates in popular Quantum Mechanics, but he is a lousy philosopher considering he still sucks the teats of religious belief. One could wonder why.

In the 1950s, the problem was that the emerging Pop Music would brainwash the kids… It still does. So what? Ever since Eve and Adam, people have been rated for who they were, from Cain, the murderer to Abraham, the prophet ready to kill his own son for god. They were all idiots, with lunacy between the ears. Even Noah, the sea captain was a loony who became pissed on landing his menagerie on top of a mountain. Somophores? Privileged somophores? History is full of their equivalents and modern technology has nothing to do with them.

What’s wrong in trying to pitch our self in a good light? That’s what living and creating content is about, including fake news. And this is not new. Kings used the device to make sure they stayed king and don’t you forget it, Sir Whatever. Yes, I know religion demands humility. That’s why kings were so humble about their gold and power, while trying to battle “usurpers” and allied themselves with the hand of god, the pope and his armies.

Previously when most humans were serfs or slaves, or a grade above – peasants -- the model of the human soul was a bit lacking. They sent poor starving humans to New South Wales for stealing a loaf of bread. So take your somophores with you Sir Keith to your old boys pub. You do not represent everyone, nor is everyone addicted to a Facebook page, like you might have been addicted to beer as a fashion to be with mates and discuss the attractive ones, either girls and boys. At this point in time, we need better that this patronising shit from a Vice-Chancellor. I’m sure you can do better. Should I be your supervisor, I’d give you an F minus for this rubbish paper. Back to the drawing board, Sir.